Staff at Scottish universities begin striking over pay dispute

Up to 6,000 staff across 10 Scottish universities have begun strike action.

The staff, on picket lines outside universities, join colleagues at 58 universities across the UK taking similar action for the next three days.

Members of the University and College Union (UCU) Scotland voted to strike from Wednesday to Friday in a dispute about falling pay, pension cuts and "worsening working conditions".

Universities UK said the pensions scheme had to be kept affordable.

And Universities and College Employers Association (UCEA), which is dealing with pay, said strikes were an "unrealistic attempt" to reopen discussions.

Last month, UCU members at the 10 Scottish institutions backed a strike in two separate ballots, one about pension cuts and one about pay.

The union has demanded a £2,500 pay increase for members, an end to "pay injustice" and zero-hours contracts as well as action to tackle "unmanageable workloads".

Meanwhile, having been rumbling on for nearly a decade, a dispute over pensions has been reignited because of what the UCU described as a "flawed valuation" of a pension scheme used by academic staff, the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS).

The UCU said the valuation had been "carried out at the start of the pandemic, when global markets were crashing" and would lower members' guaranteed retirement income by 35%.

Staff at seven universities - Heriot Watt, Dundee, Stirling, Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews and the Open University in Scotland - will strike over both pay and pensions.

Staff at Edinburgh Napier, Glasgow School of Art and Queen Margaret University will take action on pay only.

This week, UCU said Universities UK had misled staff and vice chancellors about the scale of the cuts it was pushing through.

According to the the union, Universities UK had repeatedly said its cuts to the USS pension would lead to staff pensions being cut by 10% to 18%.

However, the USS trustees' own modelling claimed that a typical member would see a 36% cut.

The union said staff pay had fallen by 20% after 12 years of below-inflation pay offers, while almost 90,000 academic and academic-related staff were on insecure contracts.

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: "It is deeply regrettable that staff have been forced into taking industrial action again, but sadly university bosses have shown little interest in negotiating in good faith and addressing the serious concerns of staff over falling pay, massive pension cuts, equality pay gaps and the rampant use of insecure contracts.

"The only time vice chancellors and principals seem to listen is when staff take action."

Rosie Hampton is both a student and teacher at the University of Glasgow - she is currently doing a PhD in Geography and is on a fixed-term contract as a graduate teaching assistant.

It is a job she loves but one she says that in the long term, could force her out of academia.

"I love teaching," she said. "But the situation as it is currently just doesn't feel sustainable. I'm tired, I'm underpaid and overworked for the amount of hours I've been putting in.

"If I put my heart and soul into it and then have to do that every six months to find a new job, I don't know if I would personally be able to stay in the sector."

Although the strike will affect her students, the 25-year-old said she supported it because of the ongoing impact on the quality of teaching.

She said: "I think we are in a position now where everybody's conditions are affected - student learning conditions are worsened by the fact that staff are exhausted.

"You can feel the enthusiasm and passion from everybody who want to be able to do a good job - but the pay and conditions have just made it so difficult so we need to be able to take a stand."

The UCU said the action would escalate in the new year if employers continued to ignore staff demands.

Universities UK, which represents 140 institutions, said the UCU strikes over pensions were not representative of how most staff felt. It said fewer than 10% of eligible pension-scheme members actually voted in favour of strike action in this ballot.

A spokesperson added: "Nonetheless, Universities UK repeatedly offered to share alternative proposals with employers, and that offer remains. We wrote to UCU on 7 September to clarify this, but to date we have received no reply."

Raj Jethwa, of the UCEA, said pay was already at the "very limit of what is affordable" and that action "aimed at harming students" was an "unrealistic" attempt to reopen the national pay round.

He said it was 10 days since the union's ballot results and not one university had indicated that it would reconsider its position on pay.

On casual contracts and workload, he added: "We have made repeated offers of joint work in these areas for two years but UCU has rejected them. UCEA genuinely wishes to engage on these matters as far as we can at a national level, noting that they are ultimately for local negotiations."

Matt Crilly, NUS Scotland president, said the students' union fully supported the UCU.

He added: "The onus for minimising disruption for students lies firmly with university bosses."